


Take Me Home

by squeakymonster



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Ariadne!centric, Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squeakymonster/pseuds/squeakymonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The job, like all dreams, is starting to fade, and if scrawled Penrose steps and doodled paradoxes and tessellations fill the margins of her notes, well, no one could expect her not to have changed a little bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> For Femslash February, I thought I’d post an Ariadne-centric fic I wrote ages ago here. This fic came out a lot angstier than I’d originally planned it, but so runs the course of love. Oh, also, a lot of what I’d imagined Ariadne’s work as is inspired by Zaha Hadid, who’s pretty great. Reposted from tumblr.

Afterward, Ariadne hugs Arthur and gets on a plane back to Paris. She has his number on a slip of paper in her back pocket, but she doesn’t think she’ll ever use it.

The rest of the team’s numbers are on her phone, but  Arthur doesn’t do electronic records of anything important (“Too easy to hack,” he told her as they stood in line at Customs, pushing a little scrap of paper torn off the corner of one of his precious Moleskines at her). Ariadne sets in on her gray plastic tray-table, next to her totem. They sit there, suddenly confusing and incongruous to her. They are the remains of a life she has no intention of living. What does she do with these?

She knows with a certainty deep in her bones that she will never use them again.

The four-year-old in the seat next to her (Ariadne is flying coach this time) makes a grab for her totem, for her gleaming bishop. If she has any sense at all, she reflects later, should would have let him take it, let the scrap of paper get whooshed away and stamped beneath a flight attendant’s spiked heel.

As it stands, though, Ariadne snatches them off the tray-table, cradling them close to her chest for a long moment as the little boy stares at her, shock evident on his face. He begins to wail. As his mother makes desperate shushing noises and flaps her hands at her son, Ariadne thrusts the offending items deep into the front pocket of her satchel.

She doesn’t sleep on the flight and ends up in JFK, slumped against a gray speckled wall, looking around with bleary, exhausted eyes. Her flight to Paris isn’t for another two hours, and Ariadne has planned to do something fun and touristy. Go to MOMA, maybe, add over-priced postcards of modern art to the Interesting And/Or Inspirational Things Notebook Professor Miles makes her keep.

Instead, she gets up off the floor. She buys herself a slice of pizza at the JFK Pizza Hut (pepperoni and green pepper). Grease drips all over her face. Ariadne thinks distantly that, technically, she could buy a Pizza Hut right now, with the money Saito is wiring to the bank account Arthur set up for her under the name Melanie Briggs.

She shakes her head. She isn’t Saito, after all.

She boards her flight and doesn’t sleep on that one either. Ariadne comes home to her perfect apartment in the Latin Quarter to find all of her stuff in boxes. In her absence, her roommate assumed Ariadne’d run away, and moved her boyfriend in. After a two A.M. Paris-time shouting match, it is agreed that Ariadne can stay the night. On the couch, because her roommate sold her bed.

Lying on her back in the living room, Ariadne calculates exactly how many hours she’s gone without sleep. The number she comes up with is distressing, even when she counts the PASIV-induced variety. Her eyes itch and burn. Her head aches. Every part of her body feels endlessly weary.

And yet, sleep doesn’t come. She is still staring at the ceiling when dawn breaks, striping Ariadne with gold light.

She’s up, the couch made up and all of her stuff arranged to go to a storage unit at the college, before anyone else is awake. She’s walking down the street, sipping coffee out of her roommate’s favorite blue mug, at half past seven in the morning. She only has her satchel and the clothes on her back. Ariadne doesn’t know where to go or what to do. She doesn’t go to class that day, choosing instead to walk through the streets at random, reorienting herself with Paris’ reality and getting her mug refilled when it begins to slip dangerously low. She knows she needs a shower, knows she looks more like a hobo and less like a person. She’ll require a decent night’s sleep tonight if she’s ever to function normally ever again. But for now, she’s okay. She’s gotten pretty goddamn used to Parisians looking at her with their stereotypical snooty disgust, anyway.

In the end, she phones a friend, who sounds slightly surprised to hear from her after two odd months of radio silence, but agrees to let her sleep on his couch. She arrives at his place at nine P.M. Paris-time (her poor jetlagged body isn’t even sure what time it is in her head anymore), strips down to her underwear, and sinks down onto his couch. It is miraculously already made up. Her eyelids flutter shut, and she sleeps solidly for the first time in four days, blissfully dreaming of nothing at all.

The next day, Ariadne has a long talk with her friend (a nice engineering student named Evan, a Canuck like her) about where she’s been for the last two months (Ariadne says it was an internship in Korea Professor Miles lined up for her, work exposure, that sort of thing), why she hasn’t called him in all that time (Ariadne says there wasn’t reception in Korea and she was too busy to get to a land line), and how long she’s planning to stay on his couch (Ariadne can tell the truth here, and does so with great relish). In the end, they agree that she can stay for a couple weeks while she sorts out a new apartment.He tells her he’s missed her and drops a kiss on the top of her head. She makes them pancakes.

They eat in silence, the chewing seemingly amplified. Ariadne showers after (fucking finally), and puts on some of Evan’s old sweats to go down to the storage unit at the college to get her suitcase, some clean clothes, and a couple textbooks.

For the next few days, Ariadne does little besides laundry. She doesn’t go back to class yet. Sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table, she circles ads for possible apartments in blue pencil, but she doesn’t go and look at any of them.She can feel Evan’s concern on the back of her neck, and is grateful for and pissed off by it in equal measures. She spends a lot of time sitting on the couch, folding her clothes. Ariadne reorganizes her suitcase eight times in the next three days, uses roll after roll of quarters at the laundromat down the street.

One day, she spends hours practicing Melanie Brigg’s signature in a careful, looping hand, until it is as second nature as her own.

The next day, she goes to the bank and withdraws 200 euros, just to test herself. The teller smiles at her and says, “Bonjour, Madamoiselle Briggs.” Ariadne counts this as an achievement. Then she goes back to Evan’s apartment and sleeps for ten hours.

The blue coffee mug occupies the coffee table at all times. When she goes back to class a few days later, she carries it in the front pocket of her satchel, with her bishop, Arthur’s phone number, and her pencils. She sets is on her desk in class, using it to store her pens and pencils and her fat, cube rubber eraser. Professor Miles, back from L.A., raises his eyebrows at it, but just nods at her. No one else takes much notice.

It gets easier when she goes back to designing buildings, filling her sketchbooks with soaring cathedrals and entire apartment blocks, detailing layouts and levels in her tiny-square graph paper notebook.The job, like all dreams, is starting to fade, and if scrawled Penrose steps and doodled paradoxes and tessellations fill the margins of her notes, well, no one could expect her not to have changed a little bit. Miles looks over her work and smiles even wider than he used to, and when she mentioned her housing problems, he comes up with four or five possible apartments and roommates, all of which look better than the scraps of advertisements torn out of the papers. Slowly, reality fills her head again.

+

Ariadne is on the prowl for a new kitchen table for Evan when she sees it. She is calmly walking down the street, peering in antique shop windows. As she tilts her head back at the sky (she often does this now, just looks at the sky; she does not think she is waiting for anything to happen), she catches a glimpse of a square of paper, shiny and bright green, plastered against a window. She can read it without too much difficulty.

COLOCATION

CHAMBRE ET TOILETTE À PART

SERVICES COMMUNS

PAR DÉTAILS, S’IL VOUS PLAIT APPELLEZ 01.92.73.37.89

FLATSHARE

SEPARATE BEDROOM AND BATHROOM

SHARED AMENITIES

FOR MORE DETAILS, PLEASE CALL 01.92.73.37.89

Without even thinking about it, Ariadne pulls out her cell phone and dials the number.

A cheery voice with a strong, posh-ish British accent answers. “Hullo? Allo?”

Ariadne swallows. “Um, hi, sorry, I’m calling about the flatshare opportunity?”

“Oh, right, ‘course. So, this is Penelope Carson. Whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”

“Oh, I’m Ariadne Gouvainis. I’m a graduate student of architecture at—”

Penelope interrupts her. “Right, of course, we’ll meet tomorrow to sort everything out. Lovely to meet you, Ariadne. Nice name, that. Ariadne.”

“Yeah, my mom teaches courses in mythology and literature at the University of Toronto. She likes the Greeks a lot.”

“I can imagine.” She pauses. “Anyhow, shall I give you an address? Did you see the ad in the paper?”

“No, actually, I know where it is.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’m standing right outside, actually. I saw the sign.”

“Are you really? I didn’t dare hope anyone would notice it. Shall I come down?”

“No, it’s fine. I wouldn’t want to interrupt anything. I’ll just come by tomorrow. What time would work for you?”

“Oh, would, say, eleven o’clock be alright?”

“Yeah, that’d be perfect. I’ll see you then.” Ariadne is halfway back to Evan’s apartment before she realizes she forgot all about the table and the groceries she was meant to purchase. She doubles back, finds a suitable table (painted turquoise and pink, of all things, but Ariadne can strip that off easy), talks the owner into delivering it tomorrow, and hits up the nearest Carrefour and a patisserie on the way home.

She’s late for dinner anyway, but since eclairs are the answers to all problems, it ends well. She tells Evan she may have an apartment. He tries to hide his grin, but he’s not entirely successful.

Ariadne doesn’t mind really.

+

Ariadne’s hands are shaking a little bit. She wraps them firmly around her blue mug to give them something to do, sips her coffee. Her nose wrinkles. She’s forgotten to add sugar.

“Hello,” she says, “You’re Ariadne, yeah? I am actually so nervous. Anxious. I shouldn’t be. I never get anxious.” Penelope looks nothing like Ariadne imagined her, with clear dark skin and tight wild curls fanning out around her face. Her eyes are wide and slightly afraid, but focused with laser-like precision on Ariadne. Ariadne swallows audibly. She is starting to regret this.

“Yeah,” Ariadne finds herself saying, “yeah, me too, man.”

Penelope smiles hugely, and Ariadne catches herself thinking Helen of Troy in the back of her mind.

This is probably a bad idea. She knows that. She catches herself watching the way Penelope’s fingers wrap around her coffee mug. She notes Penelope’s slight lisp.

But she’s agreed to move in before she’s finished with her coffee.

Over the next few months, Ariadne starts keeping a long list (an actual physical list—she doesn’t trust her brain as a safe hiding place any more) of things she knows about Penelope.

Penelope was born in Liverpool and works as a temp and writes in the in-between times.

She is terribly sophisticated. And witty. And charming.

She sings very slightly off-key when she’s drunk, which is often because she likes to drink and can’t hold her liquor for shit. She says it’s something to do with her metabolism.

Ariadne turns twenty-four in August. She has spent the last two months working in a big architecture firm Professor Miles recommended, doing the computer modeling work of the brilliant old assholes who can’t be bothered to learn for themselves.

Penelope gets a job making crepes on the corner next to Ariadne’s office building. They do lunch breaks together. Ariadne is designing buildings made of tiny cubes that look like waves and storms when looked at together. Penelope is writing stories about every single person she meets all day at her job, and doing some work for little local literary magazines when she can.

On her birthday, they get terribly, terribly drunk, and sit on a bridge (neither of them can remember which one in the morning) overlooking the Seine, their legs dangling over the edge. It is an almost stereotypical Parisian night, fat full moon reflecting on the water, the city spread out before them all twinkly and grand.

Ariadne reflects that she has never been in love quite like this before. There is a giddy sort of thrill low in her belly. It’s very interesting, and completely terrifying. The night is hot and humid, air pressing against her skin like reality..

Penelope leans over and takes her hand. Without even thinking about it, Ariadne kisses her full on the mouth.

Penelope kisses back, for one long moment, and a thousand possibilities bloom before Ariadne’s eyes. Then she pulls back, steps off the ledge, and hails a cab to take them home. She smiles happily at Ariadne on her way home, but her eyes do not quite connect.

For one brief second, Ariadne’s brain flicks back to a half-remembered dream, to Mal, hears  _do you know what it means to be a lover?_

 _Yes_ , she mouths, face pressed against the window, fogging up the glass.  _Yes yes yes. Oui, ma cherie_.

In the morning, she almost calls Dominic Cobb, has her phone out and ready before she realizes what she’s doing. She drops it like a poisonous spider.

Because there is no justice in the world, it breaks and she has to get a new one.

+

Ariadne gets her first big job just after she turns twenty six. She builds an art gallery, one that curves and swoops like a thing in flight, like a work of modern art itself. It is to be all glass and steel and white spaces, and the floors will be very very pale hardwood and she hasn’t been this in love with anything that wasn’t girl-shaped in two and a half years.

She is busier than she has ever been, and Penelope somehow becomes the coffee bearer and courier and dinner maker, roles too eminently practical to ever fit her quite right.

Ariadne learns how to swear in French properly, and demonstrates this skill to the geniuses on her team. Extensively.

Slowly, the building rises. Ariadne’s heart flutters a little bit whenever she walks onto the construction site, explaining things to the builders and bribing them with coffee and homemade cheesecake (that one was Penelope’s idea). She snaps that no, it does not fucking look like an airport, no, look at it this way, what if we moved that.

And then it’s there, done, and more real than anything she could have ever imagined, even if it’s not quite like the things she’s dreamed.

She walks in holding Penelope’s hand tight. They are both wear little black dresses and tall high heels and far too much make-up.

People congratulate Ariadne, look terribly interested in her, in her work. She smiles and feels wanted, but she still ends up in a corner far away from everyone, clutching half a dozen business cards and a glass of champagne, and examining herself in the reflection on the window.

She looks so grown up, she thinks distantly. So grown up.

Tottering slightly, she leans forward and presses her lips against the cold glass, leaving a dark lipstick kiss.

She steps back two paces and examines her handiwork. There. She has claimed it as her own and christened it and given it up all at once.

Behind the lipstick stain, she can still see her face.

She sits down on the floor, leans back against the window, and pulls out her little date book. On the page marking September 3rd is a phone number. She looks over at Penelope, who is laughing with her whole body at a joke Ariadne knows isn't funny.

Ariadne dials. “Arthur,” she says, when a put-together voice answers, “Arthur, do you think we could talk?”


End file.
